Vance leaves the cat and dog claims behind as he battles Walz over immigration

In Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance shied away from bombastic untrue claims about immigrants eating people’s pets and instead tackled issues such as the impact of immigrants on U.S.-born worker’s wages.

“You make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers,” he promised. “A lot of people will go home if they can't work for less than minimum wage in our own country. And by the way, that will be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day's work.”

Most labor economists disagree with the claim that immigrants depress native-born worker wages.

Vance carefully dodged questions regarding family separation, a policy that caused uproar during former President Donald Trump’s administration. He falsely claimed guns are smuggled into the U.S. over the border with Mexico (in fact, it’s the other way around), and spoke about immigrants as being responsible for the housing crisis — a complex issue that even conservative analysts say pre-existed the current wave of migration, but has been exacerbated by it.

Watch NPR's post-debate analysis, with Asma Khalid, Susan Davis, Tamara Keith and Stephen Fowler.